RE: What's the ".git/gitdir" file?

-----Original Message-----
On Tue, October-27-15 6:23 PM, Stefan Beller wrote:

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Kyle Meyer [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

When a ".git" file points to another repo, a ".git/gitdir" file is 
created in that repo.

For example, running

    $ mkdir repo-a repo-b
    $ cd repo-a
    $ git init
    $ cd ../repo-b
    $ echo "gitdir: ../repo-a/.git" > .git
    $ git status

results in a file "repo-a/.git/gitdir" that contains

    $ cat repo-a/.git/gitdir
    .git

I don't see this file mentioned in the gitrepository-layout manpage, 
and my searches haven't turned up any information on it.  What's the 
purpose of ".git/gitdir"?  Are there cases where it will contain 
something other than ".git"?

It's designed for submodules to work IIUC.

Back in the day each git submodule had its own .git directory keeping its local >objects.

Nowadays the repository of submodule <name> is kept in the superprojects >.git/modules/<name> directory.

Slightly OT: Is there any way of avoiding having that file in the first place? I'm hoping to have a git repository in a normal file system (Posix) and a working area in a rather less-than-normal one where dots in file names are bad (actually a dot is a separator).

Cheers,
Randall